


Bounded In a Nutshell

by StarsCrackedOpen (Misthia)



Series: Things Carried, Unseen [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Developing Friendships, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Nightmares, Partnership, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25498339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misthia/pseuds/StarsCrackedOpen
Summary: Ahsoka jolted awake again, that samefearcrawling up her throat. It felt alien inside her, foreign to her mind. She knew her own anxieties well, and this wasn’thers.Or: In which Anakin and Ahsoka learn that not only waking nightmares can be shared.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker/Ahsoka Tano
Series: Things Carried, Unseen [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839160
Comments: 8
Kudos: 188





	Bounded In a Nutshell

**Author's Note:**

> This one is a bit darker again, less fluffy and more a piece about how they’re fire-forged partners — set a while after “Gimme Shelter” but long before “Catch a Wave.” This would probably be around the two- or three-ish month mark of Ahsoka being Anakin’s padawan. They’re still learning each other at this point.
> 
> I tagged this as pre-relationship, but it’s again just a piece that would go into the whole that they make up later. It doesn’t have to be a ship piece if you don’t want it to be.
> 
> I promise, the next one will be shorter and lighter. This one was originally meant to be both.

_“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”_

_-William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” Act II, Scene II_

* * *

Out of a deep slumber, Ahsoka found herself suddenly aware. Somewhere in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, she knew only that she was very, _very_ uncomfortable. Her chest was tight. Something dark and icy swam around her and inside her, painful and raw. She jolted to full consciousness, feeling like she was falling. Her eyes opened, and for a moment she was intensely confused as to where she was. Her vision adjusted, sharper in the dark than a human’s, and she recognized the war tent she and Anakin would spend many a night (on many a planet) in.

She took a measured breath. Another. Another...

The feeling subsided slowly. She curled up, dismissing it as a bad dream, drifting off...

She jolted awake again, that same _fear_ crawling up her throat. It felt alien inside her, foreign to her mind. She knew her own anxieties well, and this wasn’t _familiar_.

Ahsoka’s heart was pounding, and she didn’t know why. She stared at the dark ceiling of the tent, breathing through a set of meditative exercises she’d been taught as a child and trying to center herself. She tried to breathe through the discomfort that ran over her skin. _I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me. I am—_

Her breath caught in her throat as the feeling surged again, strange and disconcerting. _What is happening to me...?_ She tried to get ahold of the feeling, to identify it, and then she realized...

_It isn’t mine._

A muffled grunt came from the other end of the tent and she peered over through the gloom at the shape of her master, his back to her. He was fast asleep, but then he grunted again and his shoulder twitched, and another wave of icy fear and anxiety washed into Ahsoka.

_Oh._

It was her master, and the emotion was crashing off of him in waves, coloring his Force presence and filling their tent. Everyone knew how strong the Force was with him, that he was a prodigy, and there were whispers in the youngling clans about him being the fulfillment of a prophecy — whatever that was supposed to mean.

She hadn’t realized until then just _how_ powerful he was, how much he shielded his signature, even from her. Now it was engulfed in the pain of whatever he was seeing in his dreams.

Ahsoka didn’t know what to do. _Do I wake him?_ She didn’t know how he’d react, if he’d wake up still in the grip of it, or if he’d recognize that she was trying to help him. She’d been taught not to try to wake someone from a nightmare. Whatever was happening seemed like a nightmare that he was inadvertently sharing with her. What he was feeling, so was she.

Another wave, pouring through her, and she bit back a scream. All the feeling of a nightmare, with no idea what the nightmare was. It felt like her own feelings were drowned out in the din of his. Her hands shook and she briefly considered running for Rex before fearing embarrassing her master, looking weak, and making it all worse. She rolled over and tried to reinforce her mental shields, his pain lashing her mind. Beneath everything, her heart hurt for him. She dug through all she knew, trying to think of what to do, when a strange thought occurred to her.

 _I can meditate and release my own emotions...can I do the same with his?_ She shuddered. Even had she wanted to, she didn’t think she could reach into his mind directly to help — and trying to do so now seemed a violation, with him asleep and unable to agree. They were still in many ways new to each other, and touching his mind, unshielded as it currently stood...even had he been awake, it seemed exceedingly... _intimate_.

But there _was_ their bond, new as it was. The worst of what she was feeling, she realized, came through that. Another wave rolled into her and she bit her lip and let it pass over her as best she could. It was cold, primal _fear_ , something she hadn’t previously thought Anakin Skywalker capable of feeling. Her stomach roiled as she felt it with him. She made her decision.

Ahsoka sat up on her bedroll silently and turned to face her master’s sleeping form. She folded her legs in front of her and brought her hands to rest on her knees, palms up, hands open. She breathed, reaching for the feelings spilling through their connection into her, and _pulled,_ visualizing tugging them, weaving them together as they flowed to her — or _trying_ to, meditation had never been her strong suit.

It was messy, like grabbing at smoke, and she couldn’t get all of it. She wished Master Kenobi were there and grimaced with the effort, biting back frustration. She channeled that frustration into the weave with the rest, pulling it through and releasing it into the Force to unwind itself.

It wasn’t easy to do with her own emotions, and it was apparently much, _much_ harder when they were someone else’s. And her master was clearly someone who felt _intensely._

The onslaught subsided. She breathed again, sending _calm_ and _comfort_ and _safe_ along the same connection, feeling the path back to her master. It was still new, and she didn’t know how much of what she had sent he received. She expanded on them. _It’s all right. It can’t hurt you. You’re safe._ She chanted it like a mantra in her head to focus her efforts, to deliver the message.

Another wave came, this one with a simmering undercurrent of anger. It burned in her chest.

Once again, she did her best to gather it through and out from herself, out from him. She winced at the rawness of another’s unfiltered emotion, releasing as much as she could into the Force like vapor. As it broke, she reached for the bond again.

_It’s all right. It can’t hurt you. You’re safe._

When the next wave came, she tasted bitter loneliness, and as she found her opening to wind back through the bond she added the only reassurance she could think of.

_It’s all right. It can’t hurt you. You’re safe. **I’m here.**_

She continued this pattern, as the waves rolled off him and across the bond — pulling everything that came to her through, trembling with the concentration. She did not try to reach beyond the bond to his mind. She was keenly aware that she was not supposed to know any of this, _feel_ any of it. The anguish that tumbled from her master she didn’t know the cause of, only that it was a choking shroud around his usual bright presence.

She kept on, not knowing what else to do. _Please, Master. Please wake up. It’s all right. It can’t hurt you. You’re safe. I’m here._ She kept going, and going, and as she did, her mantras overlapped and tripped and became less words and more feeling. But the waves slowly became less devastating and shorter in duration.

She didn’t stop. She was afraid if she did, she’d leave them both helpless. She went on, eventually mouthing the words as her head throbbed with the effort of staying centered in the silent hurricane between them.

Eventually the storm stopped. Ahsoka didn’t know how much time had passed — _Minutes? Hours?_ She only knew that it was still dark. The bond between them felt calm again, if raw, and his presence had settled. Her master breathed slowly, evenly.

She lay back down, tears on her face she didn’t remember crying, body trembling, legs cramped with tension. She bundled her overstimulated self as best she could into her thin blanket, mind and body completely exhausted.

She was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

* * *

Morning dawned, chilly and pale. Ahsoka woke abruptly, with a lingering image in her mind that she couldn’t place. Her head _ached_ , but she felt more...normal than she expected. With a start, she rolled over to look at her master’s cot and found it empty.

 _What time is it?_ She scrambled to her feet, straightening her clothes and pulling a poncho over her head for warmth as she left the tent.

For a moment, she wasn’t sure if the previous night had happened, or if it had simply been her own nightmare. She squared her shoulders. She was a Jedi — or almost one. She was _fine._

“‘Morning, kid.” Captain Rex raised a hand in greeting, and Anakin turned from his place by the fire he was poking.

“Ah, Ahsoka. Glad you joined us, sleepyhead.”

She sat down next to her master, nibbling on a protein stick and trying to shake the impression left in her mind — cold black bug eyes, like an enormous insect, and the wheeze of labored breath. She didn’t know if it had come out of her own dreams or from what had spilled from his, but it chilled her in a way she couldn’t explain. She shivered.

Her master’s eyes were blue and warm, looking at her with some concern. “You good, Snips?”

“I’m fine,” she said, turning it into a grimace to hide her discomfort. She wiggled her protein stick. “These aren’t the tastiest things, are they?”

Rex came over with a chuckle and a cup of steaming caf for each of them. “You get used to it. They’re better than they used to be.”

Anakin chortled. “Yeah, they taste better now that they’ve stopped trying to make them taste like real food.”

She accepted the mug gratefully from Rex, who went to help the squad pack up camp. She sipped from it and regarded Anakin from the corner of her eye as he drank deeply. He caught her eye. “Didn’t sleep well? I know the cots take a while to get used to.” She shrugged in reply. His presence was bright beside her.

“Did you sleep well, Master?” She asked lightly, watching her mug again, feeling for his answer in the Force. _Does he remember?_ He sighed, running a hand over the stubble on his cheek.

“Not really. Seems to be going around.” He gave her a mischievous look. “Or maybe I’d forgotten what it’s like sharing a tent with a snorer.”

Ahsoka flushed. “I do _not_ snore!”

Anakin laughed. “At least you’re not as bad as Obi-Wan. He sounds like a Handooine jet engine.”

She giggled in spite of herself, wondering again if it had all been a very, _very_ bad dream. Anakin downed the rest of his mug. He stood and stretched. “We should get moving. Finish breakfast and come help me tear down.”

Ahsoka washed the rest of the protein bar down with the hot caf, burning her tongue, and hurried after him.

* * *

They finished the day’s scouting, setting up camp again, eating another bland dinner. Exhausted from whatever the previous night had been, Ahsoka excused herself for bed early. She climbed onto her cot, wishing for her thicker bedding from the temple to burrow into as she fell asleep.

She was awoken some time later, raising her head slightly as Anakin entered. She felt a spike of apprehension, and knew then with certainty that the previous night hadn’t been a dream.

“Sorry, Snips, didn’t mean to wake you.” He rolled onto his own bed, stretching out and saying nothing for a long time.

She felt something light along their connection then — not exactly a question. It was aimed at the bond itself, as though Anakin were examining it. It _did_ feel changed. Still raw, to her, but deepened. More complex. Something was woven into it that hadn’t been before, but she couldn’t name it. She was too tired to consider it further.

She’d almost dozed off again when he asked, quietly, “Have I been talking in my sleep?”

Ahsoka rolled over to face him. “No,” she answered truthfully. He nodded briefly, then turned his head to face her. He looked suddenly very young, almost vulnerable, and she felt her own expression soften.

Something unspoken passed between them.

“Tell me if I start, okay?”

“Okay.”

_**Fin.** _

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up a lot longer and darker than I originally intended. Originally she just sent soothing thoughts to him in a bad dream, but as I wrote it I kept thinking of scenes from Rebels — Ahsoka’s meditation especially. Maybe I’ll write another set later, lighter and softer. But they are teenagers sent to war by a pseudo-religious organization serving as an army. I was trying to really convey how even after a bad, bad night, life moves on and carries you through the next day. I hope Ahsoka after the fact didn’t come off as too light in the face of what she’d seen but rather her uncertainty it had been real.
> 
> She didn’t see the full brunt of what was swirling around Anakin’s mind as he slept, thankfully — but I imagine what he was seeing was somewhere between a prophetic dream and a warning of what he might become, and his spilling emotion was the struggle against and rejection of it. Hence the impression of Vader that Ahsoka had when she awoke.
> 
> I have often imagined, as someone with anxiety and depression, that if a person’s innermost, rawest emotions could be transferred onto another, it would be overwhelmingly painful. This is sort of a riff on that idea — Ahsoka clearly has her own anxieties and fears but she doesn’t have the early childhood trauma of slavery and the rage that Anakin bears, though they’re clearly very similar in personality. I imagine even if one has strong passive mental shielding in this world, sleep might be the place where their control could falter, as it does here, and I imagine that such strong emotion (like any other current) would take the path of least resistance.
> 
> I’m also not sure if it’d be better to rearrange all of these into chronological order as I go — I write them as they come to me, rather than any order in particular.
> 
> Please let me know what you thought of this!


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